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Home / Science / Trump Budget Would Privatize the International Space Station, Make NASA a 'Customer'

Trump Budget Would Privatize the International Space Station, Make NASA a 'Customer'

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2018 by Virginia Carson

GETTYThis uncrewed cargo mission plans to deliver three tons of food fuel and other supplies

President 's administration announced plans Monday to end NASA's funding of the International Space Station in 2025 and begin a new $150 million program to build commercial platforms in orbit.

The Head of the European Space Agency (ESA) on Tuesday said privatising the International Space Station was unrealistic, amid USA plans to cease ISS funding in 2025.

The money would be used "to enable the development and maturation of commercial entities and capabilities which will ensure that commercial successors to the ISS - potentially including elements of the ISS - are operational when they are needed".

The $19.9 billion spending plan for 2019, up about $400 million from this year, seeks to refocus human exploration on the moon and shift responsibility for low Earth orbit missions to industry or global partners.

A report says the Trump administration is planning to privatize the International Space Station (ISS).

According to the document, the White House is working on a transition plan that will turn the International Space Station over to the private sector after funding stops by 2025.

However, the plans for privatising the ISS are likely to face heavy opposition, considering that the United States has already spent around $100 billion to build and operate it.

The ISS will cease to receive funds from the USA government from 2024, according to a Nasa document that the Post obtained.

Because NASA is the single largest partner in the ISS, there have been concerns that its refusal to extend its commitment will affect other nations' resolve to carry on with the station until 2028.

US aerospace and defense company Boeing (BA) operates the ISS for NASA, being selected as the prime contractor for the Space Station in 1993 and a cost-plus-award-fee contract with NASA that began in 1995.

Boeing, which operates the ISS for NASA, also opposes Trump's plan.

"The Space Station was built for future space exploration and as we see more companies getting involved you can do that". The commercial cargo and crew work continues through the life of the International Space Station in the budget. NASA spends billions every year to maintain and operate it. It provides no funding for the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite; the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) experiment; the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder; the Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI); or Earth-viewing instruments aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/NASA spacecraft that launched in 2015.

NASAhasn't had a permanent leader since Trump took office. Mike Suffredini, a former space station program manager for NASA who now runs Axiom Space in Houston and aims to establish the world's first commercial space station cautioned that the US government needs to have a direct hand in the International Space Station until it comes down. The first piece of the station was launched in 1998, and the complex was essentially completed with the retirement of NASA's space shuttles in 2011.

As part of a congressionally-mandated ISS transition plan yet to be released, NASA examined several options for the station's future, according to that document.

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